Senior BACKEND GO ENGINEER

Ironbelly Studios; Quebec; Remote; CAD 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A game development studio is seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to design Go-based services for handling player-generated content. This role involves collaborating with teams to ensure high responsiveness and performance in a remote work environment. The ideal candidate has over 5 years of experience in backend systems and a strong expertise in Go programming. Join us to shape the future of AI-powered storytelling and create impactful gaming experiences.

Benefits

Equity opportunities

Growth and learning opportunities

High-trust team environment

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building production backend systems in product-driven environments.
• Expertise in Go, including concurrency, profiling, and testing.
• Strong knowledge of Postgres and in-memory stores like Redis.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop Go-based services to handle player-generated content.
• Collaborate with frontend engineers and game designers to deliver features.
• Contribute to the technical roadmap and product vision.

Skills

Go programming

Backend systems

Postgres

Kubernetes

Microservices

Tools

Redis

Kafka

Docker

Job description

Ironbelly Studios is comprised of a talented, passionate, and dedicated team of game developers from around the world. Our focus is on creating high-quality entertainment experiences and providing outsourcing services at competitive costs.

Since our humble beginnings, Ironbelly has grown into a trusted name in the indie development space, with over 300 projects in 15 years, ranging from AAA titles like Gotham Knights to small mobile games. We value passion and experience, seeking individuals who prioritize game creation.

Shape the future of AI-powered storytelling by mastering client engineering and cloud-driven multiplayer systems.

Location: Full-time, remote.

Backed by top-tier investors including OpenAI, Unity, and Supercell, we're building a platform that reimagines storytelling as play—combining intuitive creation tools, emotionally expressive characters, and collaborative world-building.

The Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will design and develop Go-based services to handle player-generated content with high responsiveness, supporting features like vector search and live game state lookups. You will collaborate closely with Unity developers, product managers, and designers to define APIs and ensure seamless real-time multiplayer experiences.

This is a senior individual contributor role focused on reliability and performance, including optimizing database schemas, tuning caches, and instrumenting services for high uptime. You will contribute code, improve CI/CD pipelines, manage Kubernetes deployments, and enhance observability practices, building the backbone for our AI storytelling platform.

What You'll Do

• Own core backend and data infrastructure, designing and operating services for gameplay and content delivery.
• Lead development of scalable, reliable distributed systems using Kubernetes, microservices, and sharding techniques.
• Collaborate with frontend engineers and game designers to deliver engaging, high-performance features.
• Contribute to the technical roadmap, product vision, and long-term strategy as part of our engineering team.

You Bring

• 5+ years of experience building production backend systems in product-driven environments.
• Expertise in Go, including concurrency, profiling, and testing; familiarity with Python is a plus.
• Strong knowledge of Postgres (schema design, indexing, replication) and in-memory stores like Redis.
• Hands-on experience with microservices, message brokers (Kafka/RabbitMQ), sharding, and fault-tolerant architectures.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Helm, CI/CD pipelines, and monitoring tools.
• A results-driven approach, with a track record of shipping quickly and iterating based on data.

Bonus Points For

• Based in Canada or in the ET timezone.
• Experience with GCP and AI-assisted programming workflows.
• Startup experience or shipping a complete game independently.
• Experience integrating LLMs or diffusion models in production and evaluating AI performance.

This isn't just a job—it's a unique opportunity to co-create a new genre of game at the intersection of storytelling, AI, and player expression. We are a lean, high-trust team that values fast learning, ownership, and long-term thinking. Our culture emphasizes:

• Leading through action and execution.
• Being resourceful and innovative, leveraging AI and feedback for focused iteration.
• Having ownership and actively shaping the product.
• Rapid growth and learning opportunities.
• Equity with significant upside in building something ambitious.
• Creating impactful experiences that players find magical.

We seek builders, owners, and creative leaders eager to leave their mark.